2 arrested in Pa. in NYC toddler's shooting death

Friday, September 6, 2013

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say two men have been arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with the weekend shooting death of a New York City toddler in a stroller.

The New York residents were taken into custody about 6:30 a.m. Friday in the slaying of Antiq Hennis. Charges were not immediately filed. Police arrested the pair at an apartment complex in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania

New York authorities say the boy's parents were pushing him in a stroller while crossing a street in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn about 7:20 p.m. Sunday when multiple shots were fired. The child struck the left side of his face and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Police investigating the death believe the child's father was the intended target, and the gunfire may have been gang-related.

Anthony Hennis, 21, had just gone to pick up Antiq at the home of the baby's mother, Cherise Miller, and take him to visit Hennis' grandmother, police said. Hennis put the boy in the stroller and was pushing him across the street when four shots were fired, police said.

At the annual West Indian Day Parade about a mile and a half away Monday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the killing "a tragedy for his family, for this community, for the entire city."

The killing was at least the second case of a toddler being shot to death in a stroller this year. In March, a woman walking home from a post office in Brunswick, Ga., with her 13-month-old son was accosted by a gunman who demanded her purse and then shot her in the leg and fired a shot at the child in his stroller, killing him, authorities said.